TOPICS OF THE DAY.
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THE year, 1860, now dying away, has had a troubled and stormy life in the New World as well as in the Old. We are as far as ever from that golden age of peace which some sanguine and short-sighted mortals supposed had dawned upon Europe ten e years ago. Indeed; the history of the last decade is a sad and bitter commentary upon the vanity of that human foresight, which sees through human wishes. In spite of its progress in material wealth and comfort, in spite of the conquests of science and art, not much has been done towards the eradication of those natural forces which trouble human existence, and make life on this planet a perennial and uncertain strife. War and conflict, phymoal and moral, spring quite as much from the noble as from the ignoble passions of men, and we must be content to accept manfully the conditions of existence, taking care not to lose sight of those which are essential, and especially not to 'wrap ourselves up in the senile dream that there shall be ease and quiet in our time. The parable of the foolish virgins holds good for all time, and woe unto the man, or the nation of men, who neglect to read it aright, and to stand armed and prepared for continuous struggle. In the very year which is now ebbing away, still more in the last ten years, we have ample evidence that neither the age of per- sonal ambition, nor of chivalric heroism, nor of national aspire- tiens, nor of the strife between antagonistic principles, has passed away. The proofs are patent to us all; in the presence of a Bonaparte on the throne of France, in the splendid resurrection of Italy, in the throes of the German and Hungarian races, in the "irrepressible conflict" which,threatens to rend in fragments the -United States of America. The forces which have been mar- shalled against each other in Europe and America have not yet exhausted themselves. The hour of temporary rest has not arrived. On the contrary, we seem only on the threshold of new 'decades of national and international convulsion. Every State feels that it may be suddenly called upon to play a part in some great emergency which few, if any, foresee.
Italy-has continued in 1860 the work she began with the aid of France in 1859. Ai the price of two provinces, she added Tus- cany and the YEtoilia, to Lombardy and Piedmont. Conniving at Garibaldi's heroic. expedition to Sicily and his subsequent inroad
upon the mainland, Victor Emmanuel and Count Cavour found themselves not unwillingly compelled to thinei as much of the remains .of the Papal territory as France would permit, and, having gone, so far, to carr.y their arms into Naples and restore the Two-Sicilies to Italy. But the toughest piece of evork remains to be done. The stranger is still lord of 'Venetia and master of Rome. It is not possible to' halt, in a career like that of Victor Einmanuel, until the geographical frontiers of Italy be gained, and until Rome, the Mecca of Italians, is freed from the presence of an alien soldiery. The stone set rolling in 1859-must then roll on. Even now the work is in progress, for the roar of Italian batteries, hurling shot and shell into Gaeta, breaks the silence of the,enight ; and, strange spectacle, the fleets of the Emperor, who calred.the Italians to arms in 1859 that Italy might be free from the Alps to the Adriatic, interpose to' peotect a Sovereign whose rule was worse than, that of the Austrianer! Italy needs all her strength', every man and every coin, to Meet the great strain she must endure when she closes with the Quadrilateral; yet Napo- leon, for purposes that can only be conjectured, compels her to undertake a winter siege, and forbids her to employ her naval means in bringing it to an early end. A Bonaparte shields a Bourbon. Nobody believes that he does so from affection for a El:turbots, and every one is driven to conjecture what his motives and designs may be. But while she is diminishing her resources before Gaeta, and unwillingly permitting the factions who cling to the Bourbons- and dream of Lucien Murat, to protract the period of' confusion consequent on the change from a reign of tyranny to a reign of freedom, Italy is not idle. Her statesmen are resolutely laying the foundations of a broad organization, in- tent on presenting a front of 24,000,000 of people to the open hostility of the German and the possible latent hostility of the Gaul—her old enemies, seeing distinctly that not only peace, but independence, will not he achieved until the German reerosses his mountains, and.the Gaul takes to Iris ships and sails from the Roman shore. So fir as Italy is concerned, 1860 presents only a series of-preparations for the great labours of 1861.
We are necessarily less certain of the policy of France than of
the .course of Italy„ because none can fore-calculate the ambition of Napoleon. Disappointed in his scheme of an Italian Con- federacy, which would have left Italy weaker than he found her, he enforced the fulfiltilent of the compact which promised to him the gates of Italy and Switzerland—Nice and Savoy. When Fent and CiaLlini invaded the Papal territory, he withdrew his Ambassador from Turin and augmented his army at Rome; but while he gave these outward signs of: discontent, it is assumed that he acquiesced in the step taken. But when Garibaldi had driven Fran4 IL beyond the Volturno; and Victor'Emmannel, following: up. llte-blowe forced the Bourbon into Gaeta, alone of all the Powers of Europe, the defeated despot found a protector in Napoleon III. What may it all mean ? Further : the Emperor has assiduously endeavoured to please the British people. He has done four things calculated to delight John Bull. He signed the Commercial treaty which Mr. Cobden persuaded him to nego- tiate, and Issnit.reed to the still more liberal supplemental con- vention. He suddenly, and without warning, modified the des- potic constitution of 1862, breaking up a Mimstre Jubinal as well as a Chambre Jubinal. Then he permitted M. de Persigny to. modify in practice the despotic laws whioh held and hold the press. ofFrance as in a vice; and lastly he abolished passports, so fix as the subjects of Queen Victoria are concerned. John Bull is charmed, until he remembers that the French army does not con- tain one soldier the less, that for all he knows it may contain many soldiers the more, that a French army occupies the Lebanon as well as Rome, and that the French fleet grows more numerous- and formidable every month. Moreover, John Bull is much puzzled by the Italian policy of the Emperor—the fleet at Gaeta, and the pamphlets and articles in Paris, recommending the sale of Venetia. What are we to see ? A new war in Upper Italy ? to be- followed by a transaction tending more completely than that of 1859 to substitute French for Austrian influence in the penin- sula; a transaction which we shall be utterly powerless to pre- vent because it is sure to be, like its predecessor, selon lea regles. TMs is one of the eventualities of 1861, which we infer from the elciquent signs and portents of 1860, visible in Italy and visible in England.
The cardinal points in the recent foreign policy of the Emperor Napoleon are, to destroy the power of Austria, in which he has made some progress, and to neutralize the influence and power of England, which he has found, and will find, to be a more diffibult- enterprise. Practically, Italy owes what freedom she had to the hostility of the Emperor to Austria, and to the persevering moral support which England has given to the Italians to enable them to counteract the worst effects of French policy. The struggle between France and Austria, with Italy for a battle-ground, is. not over. Both are aware of this. It is not love of freedom. which has inspired either Emperor with the idea of making popu- lar concessions. The Emperor Napoleon wants to secure that national support, without which, history tells him, monarchs in his position are wont to fail. The Emperor Francis Joseph de- sires, at almost any price, to obtain an equivalent for national support from the varied races over which he rules. 'Without Hun- gary, what is Austria ? Nothing. A dim preception of this led to the Patent of September, 1859, which Hungary was strong enough to reject ; to the Reichsrath, which proved to be only a Council of Notables ; to the- Imperial letters of October, and the- partial restoration of Hungarian rights, also found unsatisfactory;. to the appointment of Baron von Schmerling, followed by symp- toms of the fall of Rechberg, those outward and visible signs of a return to the policy of the unhappy Stadion, and to the promised. States-General for the non-Hungarian provinces, built on a basis of provincial diets and a wide suffrage. These measuresin- dicate Austria's sense of impending troubles, and show that she hopes to ward them off or meet them boldly. by calling forth so. much of loyal spirit as may be left in the various provinces of the empire. We have no sort of faith that she will sell Venetia. We have no belief that she could rise to so high a level of moral cou- rage. Yet there are few acts she could perform which would serve her purpose so well, for an united rely, certain to be ob- tained by that means, would be far less inimical to her than tothe fancied, but not real, interests of France. If Italy owes the resto- ration of Venetia to French interposition, she will have to pay the debt by furthering the policy which dooms the house of Austria to destruction, not for the profit of Europe, but of France and Russia.-
So far as Europe is concerned, we see on all sides preparation for future strife. Italy aroused ; France armed and active in every' quarter of the Mediterranean, East as well as 'West ; Germany. troubled and bewildered with her host of kinglets, and her sheet- anchor, Prussia, "letting I dare not wait upon I would ; " Austria endeavouring to meet the evil day by popular concessions in Hun- gary, and proscription in Venetia ; Russia vigilant, not preparing, but not unprepared, dabbling in the everlasting Eastern question, which has broken out in Syria, and threatens to break out on the Danube on the firing of a signal gun in Italy ; and England, in war neutral, in moral influence active, armed by land and sea, and doubtful of the future. These are the phenomena which surround, like December clouds, the dawn of a new year on Eu- rope. But stormy as the prospects are, we may find consolation in the fact that, with ignoble and selfish, noble and generous motives and passions are largely mingled, and that, costly and perplexing as it is, the ferment in the Old World is healthful and invigora- ting. We can trust, at all events, that so much heroism and civil valour will not be like water poured on the sands of the sea, but will prove to be the strong cement of free and powerful nations, which shall take the place of the petty and the colossal tyrannies, under whose dark shade the people of so many States have endured physical agonies and moral degradation. England, at least, can steer, if she pleases, a wise and a safe course ; giving her counte- nance, if not her arms, to those States who strive to follow her ex- ample, endeavouring to base her action on right principles, and. keeping her armour bright and her powder dry. So may she come with honour out of the tempest which may break upon Europe in the opening year.
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